Draya Michele Interview

Again, you didn’t think they would go quietly back into obscurity, did you? On the heels of the Basketball Wives: L.A.’s reunion, the women are still everywhere, making sure we don’t forget them during the downtime until a potential second season. VH1 caught up with the once bullied — now break-out star — Draya Michele. The following is an excerpt from that interview.

Did you have any idea what this would be like, this whole filming experience?

Definitely imagined it to be something different. I kind of imagined it to be with me more like Royce [Reed] in the Miami show…I don’t think it turned out that way, though.

What I’m most surprised by is you are the one person, you even said it yourself at one point, “Everybody at first is against me and now everybody’s with me.” I don’t think anybody really expected that.

Right. I mean, I don’t know what everybody thought they were going to think of me, but what I thought everyone was going to think of me—I though everyone was going to hate me and just not like me. You know, what I did was I just went in and promised myself that I’d stay true to myself, and I did, and it ended up working in my favor.

Watching the show back, was there anything that shocked you the most about how anyone was portrayed?

Not really as much as anyone was portrayed, I was shocked about how much time they consumed talking about me because I really had no idea all of that was taking place.

Are you—were you offended at all that people were so harsh and calling you names from the get-go? “Groupie” and all that stuff.

Yeah, I was definitely offended being that it was coming from them. I mean, they’re not God-like women, so it’s like, where do you get off saying that? It was shocking but, you know, I took it.

Did you know when the series started that your past and the whole internet thing was going to be a topic of conversation?

I pretty much expected it and prepared myself for it. But I just assumed that if I discussed it once, I wasn’t going to have to discuss it several times. Once I did discuss it one time, I thought I was done. So being that it kept being brought up, it became a problem for me.

At this point, are you friends with everyone? It seems like Hawaii helped you all bond.

I don’t want to dwell on one storyline, but like, the worthless thing; does that still stick with you at all?

No, only because like…as soon as Imani [Showalter] called me worthless, her dirt hit the blogs because people were like, “How dare she?” You know, everybody has their own stuff, mine just surfaced. Luckily for them, no one even cares enough about them to even put their dirt out. But I mean, it happens. Everybody has dirt, so coming from her I was just like, it’s the pot calling the kettle black…You know, she was one of the people I was most shocked at because in the beginning, I really liked her.

Speaking of Imani, she also weighs in on some of the similar issues, focusing mainly on the backlash she ensued after calling Draya “worthless.” She regrets how she was portrayed on the show and while her interview is very articulate and uber-calm (typical Imani), there is something about her that still seems to come across as condescending. It’s probably just me. Portions of her interview are below.